<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>After by Woozycosm</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415582">After</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozycosm/pseuds/Woozycosm'>Woozycosm</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Child Death, Corpses, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Loss, Natural Disasters, Tragedy, Vilomah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:48:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415582</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozycosm/pseuds/Woozycosm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a short story focusing on child death as a result of a natural disaster. Theres is no fluff or happy ending - please read responsibly.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>TW: child death, description of corpses, natural disaster</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a week later that the Tompson twins were found down in the creek. Morgan, the poor boy, was the one to find them, bloated and stinking, belly-up and sun-bleached. The twister that flung them there was long gone, but its presence never left, not in the many days after. The sky was the brightest grey you’d ever seen, the air disbelief and mourning. </p><p>We still walked like statues then. So shocked from the devastation, we didn’t know how to be people anymore. The retrieval was awful. It was quiet. Too calm. The Tompson family and the reaperfolk lifted those babies out of the water, and began trudging up the hill, onto what came next.</p><p>I will never forget the unfairness of it. I had ran down to the riverbank after I heard Morgan screamin, and watched the whole thing. It made me want to cry out. The grass was pallid and ugly, as it always was. The cicadas and katydids chirped in’tween the silence, and the creek ran its course. God, even the creek sounded the same. </p><p>I felt so pitiful. After all the crashing and wailing and dyin, that riverbed had the nerve to keep on. And I stood there, like a child startled in its tantrum. Everything was the same. Every bit of what we humans had made there was razed into the dirt, and it was no difference.</p><p>I stood there sobbing and sweatin in the sun far too long. Just couldn’t will my feet to move toward that hill. When I finally made my way up, they were all huddled in the medic-camp-turned-mortuary. I heard their mother shrieking for the first time that day. For a long while afterward she went on like that, screaming until she couldn’t, gettin her strength back and screamin more. I don’t remember what I did. Wandering around what was left of us, tryin to make myself useful. Picking apart the wreckage.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>